Buried in Secrets (Carly Moore #4) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,5
shaving my head.”
“You can’t spend the rest of your life dyin’ your hair to stay hidden.”
“Why not? Plenty of women dye their hair so often they don’t even remember their natural color.”
“That part’s easy enough to figure out,” he said with a snort. “They only have to look at their bush.”
“Hank!” I protested with a laugh. “Gross. And most women wax down there now.”
His eyebrows shot up. “They what?” Then his eyes narrowed. “Do…” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Let me just say that the women in Drum seem to have other concerns, and I live in Drum.”
He shuddered and grimaced.
We were silent for a moment, and I figured his thoughts had moved past the pubic hair (or possible lack thereof) of the women in Drum, but what he said still surprised me.
“I think we’re goin’ about this all wrong.” He cast a glance in my direction. “Instead of keepin’ you hidden for the rest of your life, we need to figure out how to bring the bastard down.”
The bastard meaning my father.
My jaw dropped and I stared at him like he’d announced he was thinking about running through town naked. While I fully intended to do something about my father—after I got Bart out of the way—Hank had always been after me not to borrow trouble. “Have you lost your mind?”
“You’re tellin’ me that you intend to spend the rest of your life in Drum? That would be an absolute waste.”
“And you’re telling me you’d leave Drum?” I asked. “Because we’re family now, Hank, and I’m not leaving without you.”
“I was born on this mountain, and I’ll die here. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You, on the other hand, dropped in outta nowhere, and you can leave just as easily. But not until I know you’re safe. I’ve been given’ some thought on how to deal with your father.”
I shook my head, staring at him in horror. “Hank, you need to stay far away from my father. He’s no one to mess around with.”
“You see a one-legged old man in this chair,” he said with a look of defiance. “But I assure you, I was once a man to be feared.”
“I know you were.” My mind was working overtime, trying to figure out how to defuse this situation. “But one bad guy at a time, okay?”
“Why are you so damn set on bringin’ down Bart Drummond?” he asked in contempt. “His history has nothing to do with you.”
Because he threatened to release information to have you arrested. But I couldn’t tell him that because he’d likely go confess rather than let that asshole think he was controlling me.
“You know I blame him for Seth’s murder. I vowed to hold the people responsible for his death accountable.”
“And you did,” he said. “You killed Carson Purdy. And Carson and Bingham took care of the rest.”
My first night in town, I’d see three men drag Hank’s seventeen-year-old grandson out of a motel room several doors down from mine. They’d killed him in cold blood. Carson Purdy, Bart Drummond’s ranch overseer, had been behind it. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think Bart might have been involved too. Even if the authorities had claimed otherwise.
“We don’t talk about your past much,” I said. “But I need to know more. I need to know how bad it was.”
“The past is the past,” he said with a sigh, then his voice took on a hard edge. “I ain’t that man anymore, but I can drag him out of the closet if need be.”
“You can’t take on my father, Hank,” I said. “He’s bigger and badder than Bart Drummond.”
“Don’t underestimate me, girlie,” he said, stroking the back of the kitten’s head. “I’m capable of more than you think.”
That was exactly what I was afraid of.
Chapter Three
Molly’s car was in the parking lot when I pulled in at five minutes before noon. I usually showed up earlier when I worked the lunch shift, but I had purposely arrived as late as possible, hoping to avoid the fallout of Molly being fired. I could hide out in my car and wait for her to leave, or I could go in and go over the lunch specials with the cook, Tiny.
I was done hiding from my problems, so I got out of the car.
Tiny was in the kitchen with his newest cook, Pickle, the fourth assistant cook since I’d started. The first had been murdered and the other two fired. So far, Pickle (the nickname Tiny had given him;